Reporters will no longer be aligned to one platform but will cover topics and produce stories for all platforms.

Topic editors will lead a team of journalists and will report to platform editors, under a news director and editor-in-chief.

Fairfax editorial director of metro media Garry Linnell said the integrated approach would include The Canberra Times and Fairfax’s Perth- and Brisbane-based internet news websites, but smaller operations would concentrate on local coverage.

Mr Linnell told The Australian Financial Review the restructure would protect the “local voice” of all publications. “That’s the signal that we have to send,” he said. “The whole trend around the world has been towards localism and hyper-localism. That [losing local coverage] is the last thing we want to do and the last thing we will do. I’m not going to walk away from local coverage.”

The editorial changes are being done against a backdrop of Fairfax announcing a broader restructure last week that will involve the cutting of about 1900 jobs over three years, switching broadsheet newspapers to tabloid formats next year and shutting big printing presses in Sydney and Melbourne by mid-2014. Fairfax has agreed to an invitation from the ACTU to consult on the announced changes at the company, a move welcomed by the union that ­represents printers.

“Fairfax has not, according to the communications we have received, begun to implement any job cuts,” the secretary of the AMWU’s national print division, Lorraine Cassin, said. “Fairfax has stated that they will hold proper consultations, and we welcome that.”

But the ACTU has blasted News Ltd over it going ahead with about 115 redundancies without consulting employees or unions. The cuts were mostly in News’s digital operations but included job losses in Cairns, Townsville and the Gold Coast. ACTU secretary Dave Oliver told ABC radio that the redundancies at News Ltd were a “very disturbing development” because the company had not had firm discussions that put “all the information on the table”.

“We want to see what the business plan is, what these companies think the restructuring will look like going forward, what does it mean for their future operations . . . whether it’s in journalism, whether it’s the printers, whether it’s at call centres or the design centre,” Mr Oliver said.

“And we’re clearly of the view that that process has to be undertaken in good faith. But I can certainly say the action of News Ltd yesterday is by no means an action of good faith.

“We had the CEO [Kim Williams] quite publicly come out and say that they would be involved in a process of full transparency, disclosure and consultation. Now without that process occurring, they’ve wielded the axe and that’s just . . . totally unacceptable.”